This time I did my rhyme in a quiet voice. “I had a little cat and it had a little kitten. I’d put it in my lap wherever I’d be sittin’.”
There was a break in the fence but another started up again around a cemetery. Gravestones stood in the wispy grass, seeming to watch me go by. The hair at the back of my neck prickled as the ground crunched behind me. I stopped and looked back. There was nothing but blowing leaves. I moved on, clattering my stick as the trees grew thick around me. “I had a little dog and his name was Mike. I always let him sit wherever he’d like.” The branches clawed at me and I stumbled on a tree root, landing hard on my knee. It was the knee that had gotten cut a couple of months back. It had scarred over, but the stretched skin felt like it was still working at keeping things together. I massaged it a little and brushed the dirt off.
There it was again. Maybe not a sound, but a movement. I held my breath, listening to the quiet, then continued toward lights at the edge of the trees. “I once had a horse and his name was Fred. He ran all day, then—”
Another loud crunch behind me, then a man’s voice.
“He dropped dead.”
Shady’s Place
MAY 27, 1936
I swung around in the dimming light. A man stood holding a pitchfork as tall as he was and only slightly thinner. Everything about the man was thin. His clothes, his hair. Even his scruffy whiskers were sparse on his face.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
At first I thought he meant the pitchfork. Then I saw the compass dangling from his fingers. I checked my satchel in a panic. The outside pocket had torn open when I’d fallen.
“I’m Shady Howard. You must be Gideon’s girl.” I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. He handed me the gold compass. I hung it around my neck and tucked it into my shirt. “When you didn’t get off the train, I thought you might be making your own way into town.”
He said it like he had jumped from a train or two himself. With his worn plaid shirt and brown pants that had been stitched and patched, he looked the part.
“Are you related to Pastor Howard? The preacher at the First Baptist Church?”
“There’s folks that call me Pastor Howard. But you can call me Shady.”
I kept my distance, not knowing exactly what he meant. “Do they call you that because you are the preacher at the First Baptist Church?”
“Well, that’s a kind of interesting story.” He started walking, using his pitchfork as a walking stick. “You see, I’m what’s called an interim pastor. Meaning the old one left and I’m just filling in till they can get a new one.”
“How long you been filling in?” I asked, thinking maybe he hadn’t had time to order his preacher clothes yet. Or shave.
“Fourteen years.”
“Oh.” I worked to put on some manners. “So you weren’t in the church business when my daddy was here?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Well, I’m Abilene. I’m twelve years old and a hard worker,” I said, like I had a hundred other times in as many towns. “So, I guess you got the letter my daddy sent telling y’all I was coming.”
Mind you, I don’t really say y’all, but it’s usually best to try to sound a bit like the folks whose town you’re moving into. Never being in Kansas before, I wouldn’t know for sure, but I imagined they said things like y’all and up the road a piece and weather’s coming on.
“Are you hungry?” Shady asked. “My place is just up the road a piece.”
There it was. Funny how people who know exactly where they are can talk so much about directions. I guess those who don’t, just keep moving straight ahead. You don’t need much direction for that.
“No, sir.” I’d had only a hard-boiled egg on the train, but I was here under his hospitality and I didn’t feel right asking for food so soon.
“We’ll just head into town, then, as I need to pick up a letter.”
There would still be daylight enough to take a look around town. As we began to walk, Gideon’s stories came back to me in flashes, like views between the trees from a train window. People bustling in and out of colorful storefronts with bright awnings over the windows. Unusual-sounding names painted on the doors. MATENOPOULOS MEAT. SANTONI’S BAKERY. AKKERSON FEED & SEED.
Walking in step with Shady, I tried to conjure up something smooth and sweet from those stories, but looking around, all I could muster was dry and stale. Up and down Main Street, the stores were dingy. Gray. Every third one was boarded up. The only awnings left were torn and saggy. There wasn’t an ounce of bustling to be had. Just a few tired souls holding up a doorway here and there.
But then, hard times are a penny for plenty. They call it a Depression, but I’d say it’s a downright rut and the whole country’s in it.
There was a big gingerbread-like house sorely lacking in paint. A proper-looking lady sat quietly in a rocking chair on the porch, not having the life in her to rock. The barber, leaning against his shop door, stared as I passed. A lady in the grocery store fanned herself as a little dog yapped through the screen door. From some of the glares I got walking up the board sidewalk, I figured these folks would rather suffer through hard times on their own than have a stranger come in to witness their misery.
We didn’t slow down at the post office. “I thought we were picking up the mail.”
“Not mail. A letter. From Hattie Mae at the newspaper.”
“Hattie Mae Harper? Huckleberry Queen of 1917?”
“She’s Hattie Mae Macke now, but that’s her.”
At least there was something familiar in this town. I wondered if Hattie Mae had kept up her “News Auxiliary.”
The Manifest Herald newspaper office was about centered on Main Street and we walked into a holy mess. Newspapers were stacked two and three feet tall. A typewriter sat on a cluttered desk, its keys splayed open with some scattered on the desk like it tried to spell explosion and the explosion happened.
“Shady? That you?” a woman’s voice hollered from the back. “I’m just getting ready to close up. Thanks so much for coming by to pick up—”
A large woman came out from the back room, her hair in a frazzled bun. She caught sight of me and her hands went to her face. “Well, aren’t you a little darling? You must be Abilene.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“My, but you do look like your daddy.” She pressed me to her warm bosom and I felt her catch her breath. When I looked up at her again, her eyes were wet. “Would you like a soda pop? Of course you would. You go right on back and get yourself a nice cold bottle. We’ve got Coca-Cola and Orange Crush. Take your pick. And there’s a couple of sandwiches in there. One’s cheese and one’s meat loaf. You help yourself, now, and don’t tell me you’re not hungry.”
“Okay,” I said. I started to make my way through the maze of newspapers. Those sandwiches sounded good.
“You’ll have to excuse the mess. Uncle Henry insists on saving all these old papers but my husband, Fred, is finally going to build a storage shed out back, so I’m trying to get them organized.”
“I’ve had your very first ‘News Auxiliary’ my whole life,” I blurted out.
“Oh, my heavens. How’d you get ahold of that piece of antiquity?” She laughed and her body jiggled.
“Have you been writing that column all this time?”
“You mean all the whos, whats, whys, whens, and wheres? Yes, I suppose I have. And thanks to the Depression, I’ve also been promoted to copy editor, typesetter, and coffee maker extraordinaire.” She laughed. “Say, if you find yourself with any spare time, you could come and help me if you’d like. As you can see, there are plenty of old newspapers that need to get put in order. If you like reading ancient history, you might find it kind of interesting.”